David Lowe - The Great Chicago Fire

[At the time of the fire, Chamberlin was a reporter of twenty on the old Chicago Evening Post, afterward consolidated with the Evening Mail. His account was first published in Chicago and the Great Conflagration. issued soon after the fire by Elias Colbert and Everett Chamberlin.]

I was at the scene in a few minutes. The fire had already advanced a distance of about a single square through the frame buildings that covered the ground thickly north of De Koven Street and east of Jefferson Streetif those miserable alleys shall be dignified by being denominated streets [Plate 2]. That neighborhood had always been a terra incognita to respectable Chicagoans, and during a residence of three years in the city I had never visited it. The land was thickly studded with one-story frame dwellings, cow stables, pigsties, corncribs, sheds innumerable; every wretched building within four feet of its neighbor, and everything of woodnot a brick or a stone in the whole area.

The fire was under full headway in this combustible mass before the engines arrived, and what could be done? Streams were thrown into the flame, and evaporated almost as soon as they struck it [Plate 3]. A single fire engine in the blazing forests of Wisconsin would have been as effective as were these machines in a forest of shanties thrice as combustible as the pine woods of the North. But still the firemen kept at work fighting the flamesstupidly and listlessly, for they had worked hard all of Saturday night and most of Sunday, and had been enervated by the whisky which is always copiously poured on such occasions. I stepped in among some sheds south of Ewing Street; a fence by my side began to blaze; I beat a hasty retreat, and in five minutes the place where I had stood was all ablaze. Nothing could stop that conflagration there. It must sweep on until it reached a broad street, and then, everybody said, it would burn itself out.

Ewing Street was quite a thoroughfare for that region. It is a mere alley, it is true, but is somewhat broader than the surrounding lanes. It has elevated board sidewalks, and is passable for teams in dry weather. On that night it was crowded with people pouring out of the thickly-settled locality between Jefferson Street and the river, and here the first panic began. The wretched female inhabitants were rushing out almost naked, imploring spectators to help them on with their burdens of bed quilts, cane-bottomed chairs, iron kettles, etc. Drays were thundering along in the single procession which the narrowness of the street allowed, and all was confusion.

Plate 2. The Patrick OLeary house on De Koven Street on the Southwest Side in 1871. The Great Fire is supposed to have started in a barn behind the house. (Courtesy) of the Chicago Historical Society)

Plate 3. Equipment of the type used by the Chicago Fire Department at the time of the Great Fire.

A steamer, a steam fire engine consisting of a boiler, engine and pump. MIDDLE: A hook and ladder.